


Scar Tissue (the Heal Thyself Remix)

by Medie



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some wounds just have to be lived with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scar Tissue (the Heal Thyself Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skieswideopen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skieswideopen/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Nightmares](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3109) by Skieswideopen. 



"How do you feel?"

"Terrible."

"Good."

Kate manages a laugh that's almost genuine. "I hope you don't say that to all your patients, George."

He grins. "Only colleagues who know all my buzzwords." He points his pen at her. "Especially the ones who happen to be my boss. You know how this works, Kate, and better than I do. If you _didn't_ feel something, that's when I worry."

"Touché," she says, pushing hands along her pants. They feel smooth and dry beneath her palms, but it's a short hop to remembering them slick with blood, the groans of the dying all around her, and the sound of booted feet pounding against the floor.

She shivers and looks out at the city. George is right, of course, on both counts. She does know how the game is played, she wrote the Atlantean playbook, and she's feeling things just fine.

Precisely why she wishes she didn't.

"In the interests of filling time," George says, another disarming smile lighting up his features, "Let's run down the things you already know."

"I had no choice," Kate says, nodding. She holds up one hand, ticking them off on her fingers, "He was in a dissociative state, he had a firearm, no non-lethal options were available, and he'd already killed three people."

"But it doesn't change a thing, does it?"

She shakes her head. "No, it doesn't."

"Good," George brandishes his stylus. "Let's start there."

*

Kate knows how to use a gun. Colonel Sheppard's had her brushing up, sharpening her skills, but she learned at the Mountain. She prepared, like every other civilian in Stargate Command, to defend the facility―the world―if the need arose. It never did. She's been doing the same here, but she was preparing to protect her patients, defend the city against Wraith and Genii. She wasn't preparing for this.

She never prepared for pressing against a wall, gun in hand, listening to a boy scream and shoot an enemy that wasn't there. Time. All she needs is time to get through to him, talk him through it, and she won't get it.

This is a nightmare. No, really. She's dreaming and, logically, she knows that. If she deconstructs everything around her, she can see it. Feel it. She's dreaming about the shooting. The gun in her hand isn't slick with the sweat of her fear and the hand itself isn't shaking. She breathes in and out, but can't hear it over the thump of someone else's heartbeat. Everything feels _wrong_ and that should help.

At least, Kate's of the opinion it should. She needs the distance, the chance to view things through a professional eye, but she can't. Not here. Not when she knows, any second, a boy not old enough to shave is going to back into her line of view with a handgun aimed at a nurse. She knows she'll dive for cover in the same instant―even though he isn't looking at her―and land face to face with a guard's dead body.

A guard she'd had an appointment with that very morning.

She'll turn her head and see another guard, an arachnophobic dating a entomologist, crumpled just a few feet beyond him, closer to bleeding out with every passing second.

From there, she'll lie flat against the rough wooden floor, with Major Lorne's voice on her headset, promising reinforcements. Reinforcements that won't help. They'll get here two seconds too late.

She'll see all of that if she looks, but she doesn't. Kate won't move. She presses herself against the wall and turns her head. It won't change anything, she'll still wake up screaming ten seconds from now, but she has to try.

When she does wake, her throat hoarse, she sits and hugs her legs against her body. She's shivering and it doesn't do anything to stop them, but she didn't mean for it too. It's strange, being on this side of it. A small part of her brain is fascinated by it all while the rest of her wants to curl into a ball and shut out the world.

"Physician heal thyself," she mutters into her knee, laughs, then gets out of bed. She's cried, a lot, so much that it feels like she doesn't have any tears left. She can't bring herself to sleep, so she decides to go for a walk.

She feels like going for a run, but Kate knows if she starts running now, she'll never stop. It's harder to walk with her thoughts, but it's better too. She makes herself walk the city's corridors, taking no path in particular, and let her mind slowly settle and face a few of its ghosts.

There's no place better. These walls might have been ten thousand years empty, but the romantic in her has never been able to resist imagining Atlantis's previous inhabitants. It's the kind of puzzle that, usually, distracts her away from the tensions of the day. She lets the habit of that take hold.

It doesn't work as well tonight, but Kate doesn't expect it to. She knows she's going to have to live with this a while. It's just that, right now, she doesn't know how.

*

"I'm not sleeping much," she says, later when the sun's high over the city, and she's in her office, safe behind her desk and her tablet. George is sitting across from her, subordinate instead of therapist, and nodding with every word. "I shouldn't be seeing patients right now." She reaches for her coffee, wishing for the feel of its comforting warmth against her palms. "I feel compromised."

"We'll make arrangements," George promises, making notes on his own tablet. His stylus flies frantically and she pities the software tasked with sorting the chicken-scratch he calls handwriting. Rodney will be furious when it finally gives up the ghost. "It's not as if we've been stretched thin lately." He hesitates a bit there and she looks away. They are stretched thin. The surviving residents of M3X-892 are straining resources to a near-breaking point. If this had been a week from now and after the Daedalus's delivery of her promised personnel, things would be different. Things aren't different and her tiny team is feeling the stress.

She bites her lip, tempted to call the words back, but George's stylus jabs at her knee. "Don't even think about it, Kate. You're doing this. I think a little vacation will be just what the doctor ordered." And he will make it an order if needs be.

Kate smiles, but it's weak. "I think so. There's no quick-fix for this."

She gives George credit, he doesn't offer any platitudes in response to that. Instead, he grimaces and nods. "Worst part of the job," he agrees. "Letting them work it out for themselves."

"Trust me," she says, "It's even worse from this side of things."

*

"I could give you the speech." John sits across from her, shuffling a deck of cards back and forth, and she smiles as she shakes her head. "Oh come on, Kate," he says, hands constantly moving, "it's a good speech."

"I'm sure it is," she agrees, feeling a bit ridiculous. She's sitting on his bed, cross-legged, and they're both in sleepwear.

It's the strangest sleepover she's ever been on. Since the last time she came here, that is. Everyone's watching everything she does. She understands, she does, they're concerned for her and worried that she can't handle it. Replacements are a long way off and she's needed. She understands, yes, but the pressure doesn't help. Here, with John, there's no pressure. Here is safe.

"I should let you sleep," she says, but doesn't move. She said that last time too when she came to his door and asked him how. How does he deal with it? How do they all? John's the only one she trusted enough to answer her. He's the only one she trusts enough to ask. "You need to sleep." She said that the last time too. She'll probably say it the next time he lets her in.

He'll shrug, just like he did and will do, and they'll go right back to not talking about it. Which is good. She should feel guilty that she doesn't want to talk about it, but she doesn't. There's nothing to be said, right now, and just being here with someone who understands is enough.

John shrugs as expected. "I'm good. Trust me, there's nothing more pressing than a pile of reports and a cranky major waiting for me tomorrow, so feel free." He makes a face at the cards in his hand when half slip free and fall to the floor. "I promise, if I fall asleep on my desk it won't be because of you. When there's no one shooting at me, my job can be kind of dull." He abandons the cards, letting them fall in a mess on the desk and then leans forward. "You really didn't have a choice. I know you get it, but I kind of feel like mentioning it again anyway."

"Mentioning is good," Kate says, rubbing eyes that are still gritty from crying. "And there's no magic formula to make this right."

"I don't think there ever is."

Kate closes her eyes. It doesn't offer much relief, but it feels a little better and she'll take that much. "I hate this."

"Good." The bed dips as John sits next to her and, after a moment, his hand steals out to curl around hers. "If you liked it, that would be a little weird."

Kate laughs and leans into him, feeling the strength drain out of her. "I wish I believed in magic."

"Not half as much as I do," he says, squeezing her fingers tight.

She doesn't mean to fall asleep, she doesn't, but that doesn't stop her. She can't remember the moment she started to drift, but she wakes to an empty room and a cup of still steaming coffee on the table by the bed.

There's a note propped up on it. John's familiar scrawl. _Breakfast is on the floor. Don't step in the tray and break something. Elizabeth would kill me_.

Kate sits up and, sure enough, a tray awaits. She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling and that's the point.

"Maybe I should hire him," she muses, saluting the Johnny Cash poster with her juice.

*

John isn't the only one with reports. Not seeing patients, Kate takes the time to go through her system. She takes the scenic route, the one with less chance of running to people, to go back to her room where she showers, changes, and then takes an even more scenic route to get to her office.

There, she reviews cases and files, clearing all the backlog that, despite all intentions to the contrary, builds up when she isn't looking.

Her grandmother would call it busywork, and maybe it is, but there are no patients and hours to fill, hours that give her mind too many chances at haunting her with the sound of a body hitting the floor. Kate will organize every file in Atlantis if it means not hearing that sound one more time.

*

She can't go to Elizabeth with this. Other than John and George she hasn't gone to anyone, but that doesn't stop Elizabeth from coming to her. They've been nursing a bottle of wine for months, rationing glasses to stretch it out, and Kate's not surprised to see Elizabeth waiting with it at her door.

"George tells me you're taking some time." Elizabeth smiles. "I thought this might help."

"It can't hurt," Kate says, letting her in. She gets the cups―Athosian and a gift from Teyla―and watches Elizabeth pour. "And yes I am. I can't be seeing patients right now. I don't trust my judgment."

Elizabeth puts the bottle on a side table and settles into a chair. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Kate sits on her bed, staring at the cup in her hand. Teyla's told her the stories inscribed in the etchings, but she can't remember them. She bites her lip, feeling the sadness threaten to overwhelm her, and recognizes the disproportionate reaction for what it is. She makes herself be relieved to feel it, though, as George is right. "Everyone is."

"You can talk to me about it," Elizabeth says, but her voice is that careful, measured tone that Kate's come to associate with Atlantis's leader. She watches the frown slowly dawn across Elizabeth's face and knows it's not intentional.

She understands. She lives in the same grey space where the line between business and friendship blurs into something completely indistinguishable. "I know," she says, and means it.

"Just not now."

Kate nods. "Just not now." She takes a breath and lets it out, slow and steady. "Sit with me instead?"

Elizabeth nods, smiling. "I can do that."

*

She's on her favourite pier when John appears at her shoulder. Literally. Kate smiles, but doesn't turn. "Daedalus?"

John shifts his weight from one foot to the other, restless. It's a second before he edges up to stand beside her. "I, uh, wanted to check in on you."

"And you had Colonel Caldwell beam you here?" Kate looks at him then, letting her smile spread. She's been doing more of it lately, smiling, and she's not so distracted that she's missed who she smiles around the most. He returns it and the fact his ears are turning just a little pink has nothing to do with the setting sun behind him. "You're blushing, John."

"Yeah, I noticed," he says, grinning. "You make me nervous."

"You don't show it."

"Not lately, maybe," John shrugs easily. He's still grimy from the mission, but his gear's nowhere in sight. She's not the first stop, but she's very, very close to it. Kate likes the way that feels. "I can't count that, though. We've been under the cover of darkness and, you know, you've been off your game."

"Interesting way of phrasing it," she says, and looks out at the water again. It's calm today and, with the sun behind them, reflecting the changing colours of the sky. "Off my game."

"Yeah, well, it's the truth, right?" John moves a little closer, enough that his shirt brushes her bare arm. She shivers, but doesn't pull away. "This isn't the normal you."

"This isn't the _professional_ me," Kate says, looking up. "There is a difference." It's her turn to shrug. "Okay, some of it might have a little to do with the trauma, but not all of it."

He looks surprised. "So, uh, not all of this is about the nightmares?"

She shakes her head, then laughs. "Relax, John, falling asleep in your quarters was not a step in my grand plan of seduction. Not intentionally, anyway." She's only just beginning to see just how neatly her own subconscious played her, but, in truth, she's not complaining.

Relief chases the surprise away, "Oh good, because that would be―wow, I'm just going to put my foot in my mouth all the way through this conversation aren't I?" Scratching the back of his neck, John makes a face. "I'm not really that good at this stuff."

"That's fine," Kate says, "neither am I."

"I thought you were a couple's therapist for a while?" John asks. "Cause I remember Rodney saying something about that back when that thing with Cadman happened."

"Well, you know what they say, those who can." Kate shakes her head. "This isn't the time to even be hinting at this." She looks down at the water. "I'm not even sure what I'm hinting _at_."

"Who says we have to give it a name," John says. "We know it's not professional." He grins when she turns her head toward him. "Would _you_ come to _me_ for therapeutic advice?"

"No," Kate says, but she's smiling. It's not an expression of joy, or even happiness, but it's good and that's enough. "I came to you because I trust you, because I don't have to explain, and because you bring me breakfast and made me smile when I didn't think I had any left."

John reaches out, his fingertips brushing her cheek. "I can't imagine you without one. Don't think I want to try."

"You realize that, whatever this is, it means you'll have to see George from here on out." Kate lays her hand against his, caught by the look in his eyes. "I can't be _this_ and be your therapist too. Even if this turns into nothing, it would be wrong."

"I think I'm okay with that," John says. "It'll make complaining about your cold feet easier. Do you stick them in ice before you go to bed?"

"You're right," she says, dry. "You aren't very good at this."

"No?" John grins. "Then why are you smiling?"

"Because I feel like it." Kate's smile widens. "And because you're going to kiss me."

"Am I?" John makes a show of thinking it over. "Yeah, I think I am." He hesitates, though, just a breath from her lips. "This isn't like weird or anything, right?"

"It's Atlantis, John," Kate says, curling fingers into his jacket. "Everything is weird. That's why it works."

"Good point," he says, and seals the deal.

*

It takes time, but in time, sometimes, she can actually sleep on her own. Her dreams aren't peaceful, but she _sleeps_. She curls around her pillow, snuggling beneath a blanket that was a present from Teyla. It's warm, hand-stitched, and she loves the texture of it. There are nights its presence is smothering and she throws it off, wanting nothing around or near her, but mostly it's a comfort that wraps around her like an embrace.

The season that passes for winter on this world is coming, leaving the Atlantean spring and summer behind her. Months since the Wraith came to a forgotten world and turned hers upside down instead.

She can feel it in the breeze off the water, drifting through the window. Kate turns toward it, looking out at the sky and the ocean, and it's impossibly beautiful. So much so that it's difficult to imagine the Wraith and the pain they've inflicted on this galaxy.

"I shot a child because of you," she tells them, venom in her voice. She's learned to hate the Wraith. Intellectually, she understands that it's biology driving the Wraith, but this isn't an intellectual exercise. She's learned to take her own advice and let herself feel it.

They killed that child as surely as they killed his parents, however the manner of his death. She's still working on accepting that, but she knows it and that's something.

Reminding herself to keep reminding herself of that, Kate gets out of bed.

It's her turn to bring breakfast.


End file.
